Gender Benders, 1782-1920, by Jonathan Ned Katz

Primary documents about the lives of persons identified at birth as female, who later lived and sometimes identified as male. Documents reprinted from Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (NY: Crowell, 1976). Note by Jonathan Ned Katz added March 6, 2019 and revised March 4, 2022: In regard to people in the past, it seems to me now that we best honor them (and our own present desire to understand them) by trying to discover the changing historical terms and concepts by which they understood themselves over their lifetimes as well as the changing historical terms and concepts by which others understood them over time. It now also seems important to ask how all those terms and concepts expressed social judgments and were implicated in the power relations of individuals and classes, social systems, structures, and institutions.